


Cry Wolf

by Sorrel



Series: Zero [2]
Category: Doctor Who, Torchwood
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Immortality, Short Story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-27
Updated: 2009-11-27
Packaged: 2017-10-03 20:01:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sorrel/pseuds/Sorrel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just under thirteen decades to wait till they can see the Doctor again. They have to kill time *somehow.*</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cry Wolf

It's their second night in Paris, and they're staying in the best suite of the best hotel in the city. The first night, they roamed the streets till dawn, Rose in boy's clothes with a hat pulled low over her face. You'd have to be blind drunk to mistake her for a boy no matter how she's dressed, but most of the people out that late were, so they got away with it, and stumbled back to their rooms as the markets opened and people started filling the streets. They slept all day, and now they're getting dressed for a party with some rich merchant's family Jack knows from years before he'd met them.

He snags her around the waist, pulling her away from the mirror where she's fussing with her honey brown hair, and pulls her into a classic waltz position, barefoot in the center of the room. She laughs and steps closer, close enough to shock even the jaded continental demimonde, if anyone were here to see them.

"May I have this dance?" he asks archly. She grins up at him.

"Looks to me like you already have it," she says, but she follows when he starts dancing, her steps, as always, perfectly in tune with his. Her mother taught her the steps when she was a child, but he taught her how to _dance,_ in a way the Doctor always pretended he never could. In everything, she is an apt pupil. And they've always danced well together, in every sense of the word.

"Fools rush in where angels fear to tread," he sings in her ear. "And so I come to you, my love, with my heart above my head."

Rose makes a pleased noise and steps closer, giving up on the waltz in favor of winding her arms around his neck. "Glenn Miller."

"Well, it is our song."

"I thought Moonlight Serenade was our song."

"Close enough. Besides, I don't like to repeat myself."

Her laugh huffs against the side of his throat. "I could make the obvious joke, but I'm restraining myself."

"Appreciate it. And speaking of restraints…" He lets his voice trail off suggestively.

"Why yes, Jack," she says dryly, "I _do_ think you'd look rather nice in a pair of handcuffs."

He hides his smile in her hair. "Well, yes, obviously. I look good in everything."

"And so modest, too."

"Along with all of my other fine qualities."

"I can probably think of a few."

"I bet you can." He hums, picking up the tune again, and sings softly, "Fools rush in where wise men never go, but wise men never fall in love, so how are they to know?"

Rose braces one hand over his shoulder and slides the other up his neck, spidering her fingers into the short hairs at the base of his skull. He shivers all over at the light scratch of nails over his skin.

"When we met, I felt my life begin," he sings, right against the shell over her ear. "So open up your heart, and let this fool rush in."

"Think I can do that," she whispers back, and loops the fingers of her free hand through his collar, tugging lightly. He laughs and follows where she leads, still pressed up against her in a barely-balanced backwards rush towards the bedroom.

The dance could wait.

**~*~**

After the war he comes home to London with nothing more than the shirt on his back and a battered bag filled with letters he never sent. He looks like any officer, retired young, except the lines on his face don't show the number of battles he's seen.

He's still got the scrap of paper she gave him, with the date written on it. The numbers have long since blurred into nothing, but he has it memorized. He's late, and it's almost sunset now. He's afraid that she's going to be long gone.

(No, he's not. He would have waited forever, and he knows that she's just like him in all the ways that matter.)

He searches the thinning crowds, but finds not even a glimpse of blonde hair. He turns in a circle, his tired eyes scanning restlessly for just a hint of a familiar face, when he's stopped by a hand on his arm.

"Captain Jack Harkness," the man said. "It's an honor to finally meet you."

He's dressed in dapper clothing, though one sleeve is slightly too big. He's got something of a sad smile. "You're Repple, right?" Jack says finally.

Repple nods. "I'm here to take you home," he says, and Jack doesn't protest when he's led away. He doesn't know which way they're going- London looks so unfamiliar now- but at the moment, he doesn't particularly care. This man is leading him to Rose. That's all that matters.

They stop at some kind of upscale inn. Repple leads him inside, takes his coat, and sends him off to one of the drawing rooms. Jack thinks that if he were even a little more tired, he'd be hopelessly lost, but he's not quite so off that he can't find his way through a few hallways.

Rose is waiting for him, just like he'd known she would be. He stops in the doorway and she holds her hand out, just like the Doctor used to do. He drops his bag to the floor and goes to her.

"I missed you," he says into the curve of her neck, and her arms wind around his waist and hold him tight.

"Me, too," she says. But she hasn't seen the things he's seen. Jack's been to war before, many times. He's never seen anything like what happened to his men.

But he doesn't tell Rose this. It's not important. He just holds her tighter.

He's never going to leave her again.

**~*~**

They're at Woodstock, 1969, lying head-to-head on a long blanket, smoking and staring up at the stars. He can name almost every one, but there are so many that he's never had the chance to see up close and personally. It hits him for the billionth time that there's every chance that he might be stuck here for another hundred years, another hundred years after that, watching humanity tentatively dip its toe in the deep, dark waters of interstellar travel. If the Doctor doesn't come for them, he may never get to see some of those stars, may never learn their names in the native tongue. Some solar systems are uninhabited. He wants to be the first to set foot in them. No- he wants to be the second, or the third, following behind the Doctor with Rose at his side. That's the way it's supposed to be.

Rose is falling asleep. They're not even touching, but he can read the lines of slowly dissipating tension on the air like a blind man reading Braille. He can feel her like he can feel his own pulse- unconsciously and unceasingly. They orbit around each other like a pair of satellites. With no sun to draw them in, they're just marking time, waiting for the return of gravity.

He doesn't realize he's said any of this out loud until Rose says, "You are _so_ high."

"Am not," he says. He isn't. It wore off hours ago. The free-floating sensation comes from something else.

"You sound like a nutter."

"We're both nutters," Jack pointed out. Behind him, he hears her huff out a laugh, an exhale thick with green-smelling smoke and sleepy good humor.

"Point."

Silence falls again, amicable and easy. He loves that he can be silent with Rose. Sometimes he thinks it's the greatest luxury of all, that he can sit with her and doesn't have to worry about filling the quiet spaces with words, humor, innuendo, cleverness. He can slow down and be still. He thinks that he should probably enjoy it while it lasts, hoard these moments of peace while he still can. When they find the Doctor again, they're probably not going to have time; that stillness will have to be stolen, during the moments in between.

(The Doctor lied. Trouble is the main course. Peace is the moments in between. He says it decades ago, decades to come, in the preterite-future tense. Grammar gets complicated when you're a time traveler.)

"My love must be a kind of blind love," Rose sings. "I can't see anyone but you."

Her voice is pleasant, though not particularly special, not when she's half-baked like this. She's got a gorgeous voice when she tries, but this is the one that he loves because this is the one he's heard during a hundred drunken stumbles home, a hundred smoky nights. It's a little bit off key, and just rough enough to catch his ear every time, like calloused fingertips snagging against silk.

And he can't help but think- oh, it's so utterly Rose. Woodstock, arguably one of the greatest concerts ever, and she's singing Frank Sinatra. A different sort of time travel, but Rose loves anachronisms, perhaps because she is one. She never likes the same song twice, and when you get her sleepy and just a little high, she'll sing whatever catches her fancy. (When it's dark and late and he can't sleep, she sings lullabies. Sober, her voice is low and sweet, like honey in his ear. They never talk about it in the morning.) Tonight, for him, she's singing 1934 in 1969, and he can't see her face right now but he's absolutely sure that she's beautiful.

"Maybe millions of people go by, but they all disappear from view, and I only have eyes for you."

**~*~**

The bed is empty when wakes up, though he can still feel a trace of residual warmth where Rose slept. He gets up and pulls on a pair of pants before stumbling, half-asleep, out to the living room. There's a light on in the kitchen, so maybe she just got up for a drink of water or something-

-but no. He sees the stuff on the couch before he even gets to the kitchen door. A plain black duffel sits there, still open. He checks the contents- two pairs of jeans, three t-shirts, three pairs of underwear and socks, and one uniform- trousers instead of skirts, which meant that she's not the lead agent, because she'd need the fancy uniform if she was going to be playing politics with the locals. Her laptop case sits next to it, laptop already inside. On top of it is her headset and wristcom, in a neat little pile. It's smaller than his- a modified version that he jury-rigged after pulling the schematics off his own. She wears it on her right wrist, like him. They're both right-handed. Makes it easier, most days- no elbows bumping at awkward moments.

He feels cool air on his bare chest and tracks her out to the balcony. She's left the doors open, probably for just that reason. She's leaning against the railing, wearing only an oversized t-shirt, a half-gone cigarette in one hand.

"Those things are bad for you, you know," he says. She looks up and smiles.

"So I've heard." She takes another drag. The angle of her head causes the moonlight to glint off her pale hair. He shoves his hands into his pockets so he won't reach for her.

"You got the call, then?"

"Mm-hmm. Straight cleanup op. Didn't want to wake you just yet."

"How long?"

"Car's here in half an hour. Flight to Tokyo, another ride from there. I don't even know what we're dealing with- briefing on the way, you know the drill."

"You've got a new partner, don't you?"

"Yeah, the Jones kid. Transfer from spec ops. Guess he got tired of cloak and dagger stuff."

"Right, 'cause there's none of that in your line of work." He shakes his head, amused. "Smith and Jones. You sound like something from the Men in Black."

"Don't remind me," she says. She finishes the cigarette and grinds it out on the railing, flicking it away, then comes over and stretches up to press a chilly kiss against his jaw. "I should probably get dressed."

He grabs her wrist, pulling her back when she would push past him into the darkened living room. "You said half an hour before the car's here, right?"

She smiles her slow smile, the one that catches him low in the gut, even now, after all this time. He wonders if the Doctor ever felt like this, or if, for all his age, he ever understood this particular concept of eternity. "We've got time."

"Good," he says, and kisses her. She laughs into his mouth and wraps her arms around him, sliding cold hands up his back.

He doesn't mind a bit.

**~*~**

There's something riding her tonight. She's a flirt, forever and always, teasing curls of her tongue and a swing in her hips when she walks, but tonight has gone through flirtation and all the way out into the other side. Her skirt is short, her heels are high, and her top is low; and she's out on the floor, dancing like this is her last night on earth. Even the usual wolves are keeping clear, circling warily on the edge of the crowd, because they know that she's no little lost lamb, and she's ready and willing to show what great big teeth she has.

Jack doesn't much want to go near her, either. Out of all the things he's seen in his too-long life, she is the only one that still scares him. Maybe because she's the only one that can truly hurt him.

But the way she is tonight, she's going to hurt somebody, and he'd rather she burn him up than burn herself out. He slips through the crowd and grabs her wrist, yanking her away with little ceremony. His grip probably hurts- he can feel the bones in her wrist grinding together- but she doesn't say anything, just hisses like a cat and catches him with her nails. He ignores the welts on his hand and drags her outside, stopping only long enough to get his coat.

Out the door and into the chill London night, she starts to shiver. It doesn't take him long to find an empty alley, and he shoves her hard up against the brick wall, grinding her back hard and feeling her flames catch light inside of him when something in her eyes goes low and dark. She makes an animal noise, and he gives in, diving for her mouth, only kissing her harder when she bites his tongue almost enough to draw blood. He pulls her up by her hips and she helps, wrapping her legs around his waist, fumbling at his belt with fingers made clumsy by lust, eventually getting it open and his fly done and then she's pulling him out and sinking down.

They fuck, hard and fast, right up there against the wall. It's over in minutes, her clenching around him with a growl that doesn't even sound human, him stifling his moans into the curve of her throat with his teeth. Slumped panting against her, he wonders if it'll leave a mark. It does, sometimes, if she wants it enough.

After, she slides back down to her feet and leans against him for a moment as she regains her balance on shaky legs and high heels. Once she's steady on her feet again, she steps away and starts to walk off.

He swallows a gasp when she gets close enough to a street light for him to get a look at her back. The skin on her shoulders is abraded till it looks like raw hamburger. The blood runs down to stain her green top.

"It's Christmas," he says, dumbly, and she turns and shoots him a look so full of pain he feels it like a blow to his solar plexus. He forgets, sometimes, that she's got her own hurts. She's so cheerful, saving the planet and sending him pornographic emails when she's bored at her desk, so very Rose, that sometimes it's hard to remember that in some ways, her loss is greater than his.

He loved the Doctor. The Doctor never loved him back.

"I don't want to talk about it," she says. It's Christmas Eve, 2006. Tomorrow, a Sycorax ship is going to hover over London, and the Doctor is going to save the world in his pajamas. He'll be so close, and they can't even risk leaving Cardiff.

"You don't have to," he says. "We can go back and dance some more, if you want?" He makes the offer tentatively, the way he never is with Rose, but no matter how well he knows her, he can't figure out which way she's going to jump tonight. This is so much worse than all the other reminders of the Doctor they've had to live through. Now she has a promise that he'll come back for them.

Now she has hope.

She softens, suddenly, and gives him a little half-smile. "Nah," she said. "Let's just go home."

"Sounds good to me," he says, through a tight throat. He stops her, though, before she can walk out onto the street. "Hang on a second."

He pulls a handkerchief out of his pocket, and gently wipes the blood away from her back. Her skin shows up pink and healthy under the tacky stain. He takes off his coat and wraps it around her shoulders. She gives him a grateful look while her teeth stop chattering. She should look ridiculous, but she doesn't.

He reaches out a hand as they walk down the street, and she takes it. He tries to focus on that, and on the rapidly purpling bruise, high on her throat, and not on the way her eyes gleam under the street lights, like the TARDIS engine with the lights out. Like a banked ember. Like a predator's eyes, coming at you, out in the dark.

Like a wolf.


End file.
